Editor’s Note:

I’ve recently moved to a new neighborhood, and there are five bookstores within a ten-minute walk from my house. There’s your typical used bookstore, with its 1960s pine bookshelves and well-thumbed copies of obscure titles. There’s a chic, ultra-modern bookstore where you’ll find the best-looking, hippest hot-right-now books on the market. There’s the stalwart neighborhood store that’s been here for decades, where, if you ask for a red book with a character named Ian that your aunt read once, the seasoned booksellers will be able to find it for you. Rounding out the ’hood are a cozy store purely for cookbooks, and a gorgeous, minimal concrete box of a store that sells art and architecture books.

You could say I’ve moved to heaven. (Particularly considering the three dumpling restaurants, bougie gelateria and approximately eighty-seven dive bars that are also nearby.)

On my daily visits to these stores (I know, I don’t know how I get anything else done, either!), I take surreptitious glances at the patrons, and I’m delighted to have confirmed, through my not-at-all-creepy observation of strangers, what I already knew: readers are a diverse bunch. From punks to grandmas, geeks to glamazons, the people browsing in bookstores are totally different from one another, except for one thing: they love books (which gives them another commonality: they’re awesome).

I can’t wait to get back tomorrow for some good ol’ people-watching and book-buying. Maybe I’ll pop on my Oh Reader dad cap (available on our website, for anyone interested) to rep our little mag.

In Oh Reader Issue 019, we have something for every type of bookstore browser. Dive into this issue for stories on a wide range of topics, including ADHD, book-burning, reading-induced neuroses, the Sunday paper, parasocial relationships, manga, problematic authors, and books about books. If anything you read in these pages inspires you to purchase some new books, consider this your reminder to hit up your local bookstore—they’re paragons of bookish cool. Speaking of which, don’t forget to wear your dad cap!